Embarrassing for Israel, it links its leadership with the notion of "war crimes'" – a legal idea that emerged in the aftermath of World War Two – a deeply upsetting allegation for the citizens and supporters of the Jewish state born out of the Holocaust, and still haunted by it.

It demonstrates an increasing sophistication on the part of the anti-Zionists in their campaign to create propaganda by deed.

Why strap on a bomb belt and blow up a Tel Aviv-bound bus when you can blast a powerful message straight into the consciousness of top Israeli policymakers and western public opinion with some well targeted paperwork, avoiding the downside of being branded monsters.

The pen is surely mightier than the suicide bomber.

Following the Tizpi Livni furore, David Miliband, the Foreign Secretary, looks likely to now crackdown on this wheeze – though the Government had been putting the telescope to its blind eye on other lesser cases then – but the Palestine's house lawyers will, in all probability, attempt the same trick in other jurisdictions.

Meanwhile, the ramifications of Operation Cast Lead, Israel's maximalist retaliation to crude mortaring by Hamas from the blighted enclave of Gaza, are giving traction to the "war crimes" allegation.

Whilst from an Israeli point of view it was 'mission accomplished' quelling the Hamas bombardiers once and for all and bringing tranquillity to the south of the country for the first time in years; the international reaction to the unleashing the full might of the Israeli war machine on civilian areas was horror.

"War crimes" once a hysterical slogan of frothing anti-Zionists – for whom no insult is too tasteless – was given a new grit, culminating in the very damaging Goldstone Report.

Richard Goldstone, the respected international jurist – and a South African Jew – led the United Nations Fact Finding Mission on the Gaza Conflict.

It recommended that the sides openly investigate their own conduct and, should they fail to do so, that the allegations be brought to the International Criminal Court.

Hamas doesn't bother with such democratic trifles but what ever the flaws of the Goldstone Report an independent inquiry by Israel, similar to the Kahan Commission, which Israel set up after the 1982 Lebanon War, and the Winograd Commission, established following the 2006 Lebanon War, could go along way to dissolving the 'Cast Lead' millstone around Israel's neck.

Equally meaningful would be if Israel's leaders were to give truth to their protestations that they meant no harm to civilians (despite the depressingly high number killed) and ease the military blockade of Gaza immediately.